Balancing Bunnies, Bells and Beagles.

Raising your children in someone else’s culture is a balancing act. It’s especially difficult when the kids are young and you only return to your home country once every couple of years.

As a result, we rely on episodes of The Simpsons to impart American culture to our children. Thanks to Homer, my kids know about donuts, bowling, baseball and beer, not to mention the proper use of the word dude. As in, “Dude, qu’est-ce que t’as fait, dude?”

This balancing act becomes unbalanced around holidays, especially holidays that France and the U.S. have in common but celebrate differently.

The Bells

This past weekend I caught our son Rory looking skyward. “Hey, little dude, whatcha lookin’ for? Superman?” I asked. “Non, il n’existe pas Superman. J’attends les cloches,” he replied.

The bells?

Oh crud. They’ve gotten to him.

Legend has it that beginning in the 7^th century all of the church bells in France have taken an annual pilgrimage to “Rome” (though I suspect they really mean the Vatican by now) to see the Pope every Maundy Thursday. They actually get to spend the entire weekend with him. For their return, they are filled with anti-gravity chocolate eggs, which they sprinkle on French gardens very early Easter Sunday morning. Then they return to their steeples and begin ringing to let everyone know that (a) Christ has risen and (b) dude, go outside, we’ve brought you some chocolate eggs compliments of the Pope.

This is downright crazy. It brings up a lot of questions that just can’t be answered, even beyond the obvious issue of how a bell can fly in the first place. (Any Frenchman can tell you, by the way: they temporarily sprout wings for the occasion. Seriously.)

But I want to know things like:

What happened when the papacy was removed to Avignon? Maybe the first year, the bells went to Rome, only to find no Pope. Had to turn back around and go back to France for the papal audience. How did they feel about that? Was there less chocolate that year?

Where did they go during the Western Schism? (Well, they probably just stayed in France.)

Do they show up sometimes and have to see a Cardinal if the Pope is too busy?

Must they RSVP every year?

Had this new German Pope ever even heard of this before he got the gig? Does he get overtime for dealing with the bells?

And do the eggs ever come with little guilt-trip notes? Dear Madam/Sir, Please accept this free chocolate egg gift (along with some salvation and ever-lasting life). Would it hurt you to attend, every once in a while, one of the 1,200 beautiful churches that took us centuries to erect in your country? A+! Gros bisous, Benoit XVI.

And why do the bells leave for Rome on Maundy Thursday? If it’s supposed to be that the bells go silent on the day that Christ died, why don’t they fly away on Good Friday instead?

There are a lot of suspicious holes in this story that need to be fully investigated before I buy into it.

The Bunny

My daughter takes figure skating lessons twice a week at a nearby rink. There is an adorable and mature-beyond-her-years 10-year-old who trains there every day. She is so talented that she is excused from school half of the day each day and practices from noon until about 8 p.m. She gets a one-hour break to do her homework and eat a snack while my daughter takes to the ice with the other beginners.

I help her with her English homework, though she barely needs my help as she is just as talented in English as she is in landing a double axel. She is one of the highest-ranked French figure skaters and she does her own choreography. I’m keeping my eye on her for the future. I always look forward to my conversations with her because she is so hungry to learn about anything having to do with America. She is my eager audience. She also speaks to me in English, which is a huge plus.

Last Monday afternoon during her break, I told her that Maya had lost a tooth and was asking for 20 euros from the tooth fairy. She smiled and asked, He calls himself a mouse or a rat? Um, tooth fairy. I said it slower. She looked confused. You don’t understand my question, she said. He is a mouse or a rat in English, le petit souris? “A souris is a mouse”, I said. “But, I’m talking about teeth”. I pointed to my teeth. “Maya lost one. She wants 20 euros. In my day we got a quarter, which is worth about two of your pennies these days”. She was shaking her head in bewilderment. I moved on from the money aspect.

Thinking I’m changing the subject, I asked, “So, what’s a petit souris?” A mouse, she replies. “And what does it do?” He climbs onto your bed and under zee pillow when you sleep and puts some monies zere and takes zee tooz.

A mouse? Gets into your kid’s bed? That’s disgusting! I could never tell my kid a mouse is going to be scurrying around her head while she’s sleeping. Forget nightmares. She wouldn’t even be able to get to sleep. She said, no, he’s just a cute little mouse. What do you have? “The tooth fairy. She flies in and does pretty much the same thing, but she’s sweet and pretty and doesn’t have rabies or the plague”.

Then I decided to notch things up a bit. I told her about the Easter Bunny. “You know, we don’t have a bell that brings chocolate eggs on Easter”, I explained. “We have a bunny who brings real eggs”. Oh, yes, zat is nice, she smiled, a little chocolate rabbit. We have zose, too. “No, it’s not made of chocolate. It’s, uh, real. It’s a real bunny. He hops from house to house in the middle of the night”. He is a real rabbit? Yes. She starts to giggle. And he brings you zee chocolate eggs? No, real eggs. Painted. Her giggles turn to laughter.

And then a little light bulb went off in her head and she held her arms out with her hands about a foot apart and asked, And zee real rabbit, he is zis big and can carry all zese eggs? “No, no”, I said. “He’s really big. Um, about two meters tall, not including the ears”. He ‘as two meters? Maybe two and a ‘alf? And ‘e is real? And ‘e comes to your ‘ouse? She is laughing hysterically by now, but I can tell that deep down she is horrified. “He’s cute and cuddly and likes little children”, I assure her. Non, I zink ‘e is perhaps a giant monster. I didn’t tell her that bells can’t really fly because I see her point. The little mouse scared me. Why can’t a giant rabbit scare her?

The Beagle

On Saturday evening, we sat down with the kids and watched It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. Just like with the Great Pumpkin fiasco, Linus gets a bit funky with his holidays. Instead of the Easter Bunny, he anticipates that the Easter Beagle will be giving out painted eggs to all the good little girls and boys on Easter morning.

Our children watched in amazement. There’s an Easter Beagle, too? No, no, there’s not. We promise. Well, then why are they talking about the Easter Beagle? Because Linus is a weird little dude. Oh, a dude, they said in unison, as though now they understood completely.

On Easter Sunday, the children were delighted to find chocolate eggs hidden in plain sight in the living room, but wanted to know who brought them. Was it the Bunny? The Bell? The Beagle?

None of the above. It was me.

No, I didn’t tell them that. It was the Bunny. Because even though all three are equally ridiculous, the Bunny is what we grew up with, so it’s what we’re sticking with.